From modernist experiment to post-modern playfulness, from Georgian convention to free-verse confession, and from Edwardian poetry of empire to post-imperial diversity, the collection embraces vital contrasts and continuities. The extraordinary diversity of the century's early decades are given full representation: Edwardian and Georgian writers such Robert Bridges, A.E. Housman, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Charlotte Mew and John Masefield can be searched alongside the revolutionary modernist writings of W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Ford Madox Ford, John Rodker, D.H. Lawrence, Hugh MacDiarmid and Basil Bunting and the war poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, David Jones, Robert Graves and Laurence Binyon.